Will be new MacBook Air 13" with 1.3GHz i5 and 8GB RAM enough for Logic Pro?

[Debian]

Hi there,
I would like to ask you, if this configuration which is listed in title is enough for Logic Pro. I need like 15-20 tracks with some (one or two) heavy sounds like Nexus etc. Then some lightweight sounds. I am able to use external sound card from M-Audio. It's a dilemma for me.

Thank you!

 

[NMF]

Hmm... no idea, but I'm subbing to this thread as this is relevant to my interests.

 

[Boyd01]

I don't use anything like 15 or 20 tracks - typically just 4 tracks with analog microphones recording live. But my 2011 i5/4gb/256gb 13" MBA had no problem with that. Have added a couple MIDI tracks from time to time. Everything worked fine on that old machine - I was getting about 12ms roundtrip latency with my USB2 4 channel interface.

Now running a 2013 i7/8gb/512gb 11" MBA and latency dropped to about 9 ms with the same setup. My guess is that the improvement mostly comes from the faster SSD in the 2013 machine. This is with Logic 9, I have not upgraded to the new version.

 

[Debian]

I don't use anything like 15 or 20 tracks - typically just 4 tracks with analog microphones recording live. But my 2011 i5/4gb/256gb 13" MBA had no problem with that. Have added a couple MIDI tracks from time to time. Everything worked fine on that old machine - I was getting about 12ms roundtrip latency with my USB2 4 channel interface.

Now running a 2013 i7/8gb/512gb 11" MBA and latency dropped to about 9 ms with the same setup. My guess is that the improvement mostly comes from the faster SSD in the 2013 machine. This is with Logic 9, I have not upgraded to the new version.

Thank you for your reply. It seems that 12ms is too much for my midi keys but 9ms is acceptable (1.3GHz will be a little bit slower maybe). On my windows machine with M-Audio Fast-track I am getting 10ms and with Asio4All 3ms (quality drops, I am not able to make more than 2 tracks).

 

[Astrofox]

Runs fine for me on my 2013 i7/8gb. Not too sure about latency, but the demo song on Logic Pro X has 70 or so tracks running (cant remember how many exactly) and the processor is able to handle it no problem.

Put it this way if a 13 inch Macbook Pro from a year or two ago could do it, the Air can do it.

 

[devilofspades]

Hi there,
I would like to ask you, if this configuration which is listed in title is enough for Logic Pro. I need like 15-20 tracks with some (one or two) heavy sounds like Nexus etc. Then some lightweight sounds. I am able to use external sound card from M-Audio. It's a dilemma for me.

Thank you!

i use logic on a 7 year old macbook pro, and while the ui does get a bit sluggish when reaching the track count you are inquiring about it does the work just fine. like someone else said, if an older mbp can do it, then the latest mba can do it too.

 

[Debian]

i use logic on a 7 year old macbook pro, and while the ui does get a bit sluggish when reaching the track count you are inquiring about it does the work just fine. like someone else said, if an older mbp can do it, then the latest mba can do it too.

Thank you for reply, that's amazing.

 

[Boyd01]

It seems that 12ms is too much for my midi keys but 9ms is acceptable

I don't know much about MIDI - I have a keyboard but don't use it often. However I'm not sure you can compare latency with a MIDI device and roundtrip latency from a 4 channel analog interface recording live sound... can you? With my old MBA I also used a two channel interface with two microphones. That was faster, only about 8ms latency on the 2011 machine.

My 4 channel interface is an Akai EIE Pro which was inexpensive and I don't think it's particularly fast. Reading reviews when it came out, there were complaints that it was especially slow on Windows but I think they improved the drivers later.